A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humour.J.M. CoetzeeHuman dramas are offset by landscape and animals feelingly delineated andDavid Colmers translati... » 

A novel of restrained tenderness and laconic humour.J.M. CoetzeeHuman dramas are offset by landscape and animals feelingly delineated andDavid Colmers translation is distinguished by an exceptional and crucial earfor dialogue.Paul Binding The Independent Stealthy seductive storytelling that draws you into a world of silent rage and quite unexpectedrelationships. Compelling and convincing from beginning to end.Tim ParksWhen his twin brother dies in a car accident Helmer is obliged to returnfrom university life to take over his brothers role on the small family farmresigning himself to spending the rest of his days with his head under a cow.Thirty years later Helmer moves his invalid father upstairs to have him outof the way. Soon after Riet once engaged to marry Helmers twin appears andasks if she and her troubled eighteenyearold son could come to live with themon the farm. Ostensibly a novel about the canals the green fields and theunrelenting flatness of the Dutch countryside The Twin ultimately opens itselfto the possibility or impossibility of taking life into ones own hands. Itchronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity and is culturally apartyet is riven with longing. Gerbrand Bakker studied Dutch literature andworked subtitling nature films before becoming a gardener. The Twin his firstnovel appeared in Dutch in 2006 and was awarded the Golden DogEar Prize forthe bestselling literary debut in the Netherlands. David Colmer is a writerand translator. He is a twotime winner of the David Reid Poetry TranslationPrize. «